All bunkered down.

It was an early start for us all this morning - but rather than the usual Saturday morning supermarket shop, Helen and I were out walking Reggie under clear blue skies at 7.10am today. The poor confused pooch must have wondered what was happening as we walked him along one of our usual routes from the former mill, now Hotel San Lorenzo, in the early morning chill. We were home, walk done by, 8am so that we could have a quick breakfast and be ready for an 8.15am departure.

Earlier in the week I had flippantly suggested a trip to the Serchio valley to try and find some WWII bunkers built by the Germans as part of the Gothic Line - a supposedly impenetrable line of defence that stretched from the east coast of Italy to the west cost , which was intended to aid the retreat of the Germans to Berlin by slowing the allies' chase after they had landed in Sicily.

As I sat down last night to try and find the locations of these bunkers (guessing they'd be a little tricky to find), I stumbled across the web page of the ProLoco organization for the village Borgo a Mozzano - who, it turns out, run a Museum of Memory about the war, and also run tours of the bunkers. It was then that it dawned on me that you can't just roll up and look around the bunkers and they were most likely under lock and key. I panicked, as we'd planned to go tomorrow morning, looked at the time... (17:15) and decided to call the mobile number listed on the ProLoco website for the president of the organisation. The phone rang... and rang... and rang... and...then answered!

I asked if we could visit the bunkers tomorrow morning, so the chap on the other end he said he'd call me back in five minutes. As I wondering if I would ever hear from him again, never mind in 5 minutes' time, the phone rang - he asked if 09:30 we be OK! After checking with the boss, I confirmed that we could indeed make half nine, it was a date!

After a 45 minute drive towards Lucca then heading up into the Serchio valley, we arrived in the vicinity of Borgo a Mozzano almost half an hour early so we decided to take a short detour and take show Jill and Mike the beautiful Ponte di Diavolo (bridge of the devil) - and what a beautiful sight it was today, with a deep blue cloudless sky and brilliant white snow-covered mountains in the background.

We then headed back to the village, found the museum (the arranged meeting point), and found a guy unlocking the door - when he saw us, he welcomed us in, this must be our guide!

We spent half a hour being shown around the small but absolutely fascinating museum (normally only open on Thursday mornings as it's entirely run by volunteers) looking at maps of WWII activity in the area, WWII uniforms (German, Brazilian, American), posters about curfews and blackouts, old weapons and ammunition found in the area, communications equipment and a huge array of other thought-provoking artefacts, we headed outside and hopped into our respective cars to follow our guide to the first set of fortifications.

I won't bore you all to tedium with a step by step account of our tour (which was FAR from boring or tedious) but the photographs give you a good taste of what we saw. In brief, these few bunkers and fortifications are reportedly the best preserved of any across the Gothic Line. The allies broke through the line both to the east and to the west of this part of it, meaning that these bunkers saw no fighting during the final stages of the war and they remain in the same condition as they were left in at the end of the the war (apart from the hefty concrete anti-tank walls that ran between them having had sections removed to re-open the roads). 

Inside a bunker.

Anti-tank wall with section removed to re-open the road after the war.

Going in.

Inside...

Lookout (machine gun post).

That's not actually real rock above the entrance, it's cement made to look like rock (very convincing too).

Going down.

Map of WWII activity in the area.

The beautiful village of Anchiano. There were more fortifications underneath the church,

"1944".

Another machine gun lookout.

The tour was amazing - all two hours of it - and despite Marcello, our guide and president of the society, not speaking a word of English, we learned a huge amount and left feeling thankful to him for our morning and humbled by the enormous scale of the war and the enormous cost to lives.

We arrived home just before 1pm, found Reggie very pleased to see us, and ate our lunch in the baking sun (soft boiled goose eggs on toast, fresh bread, cheeses and pieces of stuffed chicken - from Amanda (of course)).

After lunch, Helen and I  promptly dashed into Pescia to do the supermarket shopping that we would usually have done first thing in the morning, and returned to find Mike and Jill hard at work on the lower terraces digging over the veg beds. Rather than flake out in the sun, therefore, Helen and I felt compelled to join in the toil and we spent a few hours clearing upper terraces and starting the strimming for the year.

Like the rest of Europe, we put our clocks forward tonight, so we'll lose an hour, and after a very busy day today we are hoping for a bit of a later start and a slightly slower-paced day tomorrow. We'll see!